There is currently a drive to develop wireless communication technologies to handle so-called “first-mile/last-mile” data communication, i.e. being able to transfer data between a widespread wired communication infrastructure/network and particular senders/recipients who are geographically near to, but not physically connected to, that infrastructure. Examples of such developing technologies include technologies that conform to the IEEE802.16 standards, also known as WiMAX.
Typically, in such communication scenarios, a base station forms part of the wired communication infrastructure/network and is responsible for wirelessly communicating data to one or more intended recipients and wirelessly receiving data from one or more senders. The base station therefore uses a scheduler to determine which data, and how much data, should be wirelessly communicated to the intended recipients, and when.
Current scheduling methods assume that there is a fixed bandwidth available for the data communication. However, the bandwidth available for wireless communication varies over time depending on several factors, such as the weather, the geographical and environmental location of the recipient and the base station, etc. Each of these has an impact on the choice of modulation method used for the wireless communication. Therefore, there is a need for a scheduler that can efficiently use the dynamically changing bandwidth that is actually available for the wireless communication.
Additionally, different data flows that are communicated may have different associated quality-of-service requirements, and, due to the nature of wireless data communication, these may vary over time. There is therefore the additional need for a scheduler that can perform communication scheduling whilst taking account of the various dynamic quality-of-service requirements for the data to be communicated.
There is also the need for a scheduler that can be easily maintained and that can easily cope with the introduction of new types of data flow and quality-of-service requirements, without a significant impact on the operation of the scheduler.